1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digitized document circulating system and particularly relates to a digitized document circulating system in which when a digitized document prepared for circulation is read by a user, the user can receive history information of a plurality of other digitized documents relevant to the digitized document read by the user.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the prices of personal computers, word processors, or the like, fall down, a large number of office workers try to generate documents or tables in the form of digitized documents. To attain an improvement in productivity of such office workers, there has been made greater the demand for a digitized document circulating system in which group work of office workers in practical business is modeled as a flow (business process) of documents along a circulation path so that digitized documents are automatically circulated along the circulation path.
Such a system has been disclosed in U.S. patent application No. 08/531,401, filed simultaneously with this application on Sep. 21, 1995, the disclosure of that application is incorporated herein by reference.
If, in group work of office workers using the aforementioned system, each user merely independently goes on with work (processing of digitized documents circulated) assigned to the user, the independent work may hinder the group work. One of important points for an improvement in productivity is that each user performs his or her duty while grasping the total image of group work by understanding the significance of assigned work (what path is used for circulating the work) and following up already processed work (how the work progresses after that) by reference to a history of work of related workers, that is, by reference to a history of circulated digitized documents.
Electronic mail is known as a simple group work system. In the electronic mail system, messages (a kind of digitized document) are transmitted/received through a network system between computers. As described in xe2x80x9cUNIX WHITE BOOK, stationary UNIXxe2x80x9d (pp.87-98, written by Shuichi Yukita and published by McGraw-Hill, Inc., Jul. 30, 1992), a destination (an example of the simplest circulation path) and history information (record of circulation of electronic mail) including the sending time, the sender""s name, the receiving time, the receiver""s name and the title, are inserted as additional information in front of the body of a message. A receiver can know the history of the electronic mail on the basis of this additional information.
In the xe2x80x9cmethod for confirming and controlling transmission of a plurality of electronic mail objectsxe2x80x9d disclosed in JP-A-2-184142, the following functions have been disclosed in addition to the aforementioned electronic mail function.
(1) A function for storing a copy of a transmitted electronic mail as a sender side log;
(2) A function for sending an electronic mail for confirmation from a receiver back to the sender when the receiver receives an electronic mail; and
(3) A function for sending an electronic mail again from the sender to the receiver when no electronic mail for confirmation is sent in a predetermined time.
According to the technique of JP-A-2-184142, the receiver can procure the history of a electronic mail and the sender can confirm the arrival of a electronic mail.
In the xe2x80x9coffice information processing systemxe2x80x9d disclosed in JP-A-5-63728, the following functions are provided in addition to the aforementioned electronic mail function and the functions described in JP-A-2-184142.
(1) A function in which the transmission side of a electronic mail inquires of the reception side about the state of processing of an electronic mail; and
(2) A function in which the reception side replies to the inquiry of (1).
According to JP-A-5-63728, the receiver can procure the history of an electronic mail and the sender can also procure the state of processing of an electronic mail on the reception side.
In transactions subjected to the aforementioned digitized document circulating system, there are a lot of transactions in which a plurality of digitized documents are circulated in a manner so that they are circulated parallelly through different paths respectively and are collected to one place at a certain point of time. For example, there is such a transaction that in an ordering transaction, a decision document and an order document are generated by the planning department and the research department respectively and separately, but those documents are collected into one as an order sheet to obtain permission of the accounting department""s manager and then an ordering slip is issued from the material department. In such a transaction, the efficiency for fulfilling the transaction is improved if a user can refer to the histories of digitized documents which are not passed through the user. For example, the minimum requirement for obtaining permission of the accounting department""s manager is a set of a decision document and an order document. To fulfill the transaction more smoothly, there is required a flexible measure which is such that the planning department procures the history information of the order document from the research department to check the state of progress of work and the decision document is preferentially generated when the request document has been handed to the accounting department""s manager.
In the aforementioned conventional technique, however, no consideration is taken of the user""s referring to the history information of digitized documents which are not circulated to the user. Hereinafter, a series of flow of digitized documents in a transaction which is made to progress by circulation of the digitized documents among a plurality of users is called xe2x80x9ctransactionxe2x80x9d.
An object of the present invention is to provide a digitized document circulating system in which users can refer to circulation history information (transaction log) of all digitized documents in one and the same transaction.
In the aforementioned conventional technique, each user can refer to the state of processing of processed digitized documents by using the histories (user log) of the digitized documents circulated to the user, but the user cannot refer to the state of processing of digitized documents not circulated to the user.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a digitized document circulating system in which each user can refer to the state of processing of all digitized documents contained in a transaction by using a user log.
The present invention provides a digitized document circulating system in which when a digitized document is transferred, the circulation history of a transaction concerning the digitized document is procured so that the circulation history is displayed for the user in response to an order from the user.
Further, the present invention provides a digitized document circulating system in which a user log is displayed so that circulation histories concerning digitized documents assigned from the user log are displayed for users.
Digitized documents to be circulated and transactions are stored in a condition that they are correlated with each other, so that when a digitized document is transferred, the circulation history of a transaction concerned with the digitized document can be accessed. Accordingly, the circulation history of a concerned transaction can be procured whenever a digitized document is transferred, so that the circulation histories of transactions can be accumulated.
Because the user log records the histories of all digitized documents circulated to users, the circulation history of a transaction concerned with a specific digitized document can be accessed by displaying the user log and designating the specific digitized document.